Since 1998, when South Coast Repertory held its first Pacific Playwrights Festival, promoting new works, it has spawned plays by such playwrights as Sarah Ruhl, Amy Freed, and Lynn Nottage. This year's festival anchor and season entry is "Silent Sky," Lauren Gunderson's curiously contrived story of little-known turn-of-the-century astronomer Henrietta Leavitt. Exposition about her seminal contributions to astronomy and her personal life makes up the successes and shortcomings of the production.
At the play's opening, Leavitt (Monette Magrath) is challenging her sister, Margaret (Erin Cottrell), to leave behind the family home and join her in an adventure in Boston at Harvard, where she has been offered a position. Margaret, newly engaged and less adventurous, stays behind, and Henrietta excitedly accepts and becomes a "computer" of stars in Harvard's observatory. She soon learns from her fellow female computers, Williamina Fleming (Amelia White) and Annie Cannon (Colette Kilroy), that she is expected to do the women's work of recording data and leave the glory and theories to the male professors.
Magrath is upbeat and makes the most of her characterization, but scientific explanations about astronomy and facts about the contributions Leavitt made to scientific research distractingly compete with details of the character's life: her deafness, an unexplained illness, and her love story with her boss, Peter Shaw (a straight-laced Nick Toren).
John Iacovelli's revolving set and York Kennedy's star-studded lighting design make a pretty setting for the ins and outs of Henrietta's story. Starchy suffragette Kilroy and endearingly charming Fleming add a spark to the proceedings, and their dialogue is the liveliest of the play.
Director Anne Justine D'Zmura is challenged to make the most of the fragmented story, and with few props she creates the observatory laboratory where the women work and Henrietta's home, complete with piano as well as music by Margaret that adds mood to the production.
The germ of the story and the interesting historical perspective on women's rights don't seem cohesive, even though the production is attractive and generally well-acted. The story seems skeletal, and the direction and technical aspects try to move it along, but the human factor seems more stereotypical than real.
Presented by and at South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Apr. 9–May 1. Tue.–Wed., 7:30 p.m.; Thu.–Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2:30 and 8 p.m.; Sun., 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. (714) 708-5555 or www.scr.org.